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Scientific Chronology of Real-time Plasticity That Supports Consciousness
Introduction Below is a scientific chronology of real-time plasticity. If you know about an additional theoretical or research development not listed below, please add it, preferably in chronological order from oldest to newest. Chronology In 2006, Stuart Hameroff articulated a concept closely akin to real-time plasticity in his article "Consciousness, Neurobiology and Quantum Mechanics: The Case for a Connection", in Tuszynski, J.A., Ed., The Emerging Physics of Consciousness, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2006, pp. 193-253. At page 220, he wrote (referring to microtubules as MTs) that the MT lattice could represent and process information. Further, he identified conformational states of proteins as "the currency of real-time activities in living cells." He argued that protein conformation may be the essential biological input-output function. A March 2007 Science article by Jacobs, G.H., Williams, G.A., Cahill, H., and Nathans, J., titled "Emergence of Novel Color Vision in Mice Engineered to Express a Human Cone Photopigment", used the term "inherent plasticity" in the context of sensory experience. For example, the article's abstract concluded that inherent plasticity in mammalian visual system permits a new dimension of sensory experience due to gene-driven changes in receptors. From the context, it is not clear whether Jacobs et al. considered that their mice subjects were having changing conscious experience or merely changing behavior resulting from changing sensation; also, Jacobs et al. do not mention cytoskeletal components, although they discuss changes in neural wiring and neural circuitry, which are generally thought to involve cytoskeletal activity. In 2009, in their book Nanoneuroscience: Structural and Functional Roles of the Neuronal Cytoskeleton in Health and Disease, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2009, Nancy Woolf, Avner Priel, and Jack Tuszynski described how microtubule matrices in large ensembles of neurons exhibit collective plasticity--simultaneously up- or down-regulating proteolysis of MAP2 (page 243 and Fig. 6.4, page 244). In 2010, Jade Qiqing Wang published a doctoral thesis (available here) titled "Neural Encoding of Sound: Context Dependency in Real-time Plasticity", describing ability of brainstem to modify its encoding in real-time. Dr. Wang's Abstract shows that his work does not relate to real-time plasticity that support change in conscious experience, and therefore is not relevant to this Wiki. The term "real-time plasticity" also appeared in a July 2010 Biology Letters article by Bermudez-Cuamatzin, E., Rios-Chelen, A.A., Gil, D., and Macias Garci, C., titled "Experimental evidence for real-time song frequency shift in response to urban noise in a passerine bird". The paper described an experiment showing that house finch males shift minimum frequency of songs in response to increased urban noise amplitude. Bermudez-Cuamatzin et al. described this change as indicating "real-time plasticity". Bermudez-Cuamatzin et al. do not discuss consciousness, leaving it unclear whether their meaning encompasses forms of real-time plasticity that support change in conscious experience. On April 10, 2012, Jim Beran presented a talk in a concurrent session at the Toward a Science of Consciousness 2012 conference, Tucson, Arizona. His talk was titled "Taking Hints from Protozoans--Did Microtubule-Related Plasticity Evolve Jointly with Consciousness?", and citations for references can be found by following links from his Abstract or from the description of his talk. On March 4, 2013, Jim Beran presented a talk in a concurrent session at the TSC 2013 conference, Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Agra, India. His talk was titled "Mere Protein Molecules? Or Mutating Machines?--How Evolution of Posttranslational Modifications (PTMs) Led to Microtubule-based Structures with Consciousness-specific Plasticity", and citations for references can be found by following links from his Abstract or from the description of his talk.